Maine’s open door for refugees meets a housing shortage
Even now, alive and safe, Linode Lafleur cries at memories of the jungle. The Haitian woman and her family were lost for days struggling to get to the United States.
No food, no rest. Fording chest-high rivers that swept many others away. Bodies by the path. Treacherous cliffs, so steep, so hard. Only the pleas of her 4-year-old son kept her going. “I wanted to throw myself off the cliffs. I wanted to die,” she says.
Haiti to Chile to Bolivia to Peru to Ecuador to Colombia. Through the jungle into Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico. Much of it on foot.
All to suffer again, this time from men instead of chasms. Tricked, kidnapped, robbed at gunpoint in Mexico. Stripped of what little they had. Their son held up by his legs as thieves stole his clothing. Ms. Lafleur’s husband, gun to his ear, desperately crying, “Why are you doing this? We are just looking for a life!”
All to get to a new land. All to find shelter and safety in a small town in a northern corner of America, a town that has opened its doors, welcomed the strangers, but is struggling under the burden. A town that says it cannot take any more.
Portland, Maine, population 68,000, is 84% white and tucked snugly away from any border problems – the Canadian border five hours away catches the occasional migrant walking north into Canada.
Yet the city that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they
